Motorist chases down rock throwers

José R. Reyes and his uncle ducked down in the red Chevrolet pickup truck worried the loud crashing noises Saturday evening were gunshots ripping through the air.

The 27-year-old Worcester handyman soon learned rocks were raining down upon cars at the eastbound Kelley Square on-ramp to Interstate 290 in Worcester.

“I honestly thought it might have been a gunshot, that’s how loud it was,” he said, his finger running over the circular crack on his windshield. “We kind of ducked down a little and then we realized the windshield was cracked and we figured out it was a rock.”

Four boys, ages 9 to 11, will be charged in juvenile court with damaging a dozen vehicles after they tossed golf ball- to softball-sized rocks at vehicles around 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Authorities did not release the names or hometowns of the youths.

After realizing he wasn’t being shot at, Mr. Reyes pulled his truck over, jumped out, scaled a stone ledge and chased the youths through the woods and into the neighborhood. One of the suspects ran right into the arms of a Worcester police officer, who had responded to help.

Standing at the state police Holden barracks yesterday, Mr. Reyes recalled what happened to now 61-year-old Michael P. Porra of Ludlow five years ago. Mr. Porra was driving underneath the Laurel Street overpass on I-290 about 4:45 a.m. on July 26, 2006, when a softball-sized rock smashed through his Volvo’s windshield.

Mr. Porra was struck in the face, causing him to swerve and strike a guardrail. The injuries forced Mr. Porra to retire from his job at Saint-Gobain’s Refractory Plant 6 at the company’s Greendale operations.

“His (Mr. Porra’s) life was changed pretty bad,” said Mr. Reyes. “I think that kind of influenced me to chase them down and see if I could get my hands on them and find out what they were thinking.”

The news of rocks being hurled at cars onto I-290 made Mr. Porra sick.

“I don’t know what they get out of it,” he said in a telephone interview. “I don’t understand it.”

Mr. Porra lost vision in his right eye. He lost his sense of smell and some taste.

He underwent several surgeries and is still unstable on his feet. His story clearly shows these incidents can cause more than just car damage, he said.

This past year was pretty good, Mr. Porra said, but he can’t work anymore. No one was charged in his case.

“If I could go up in front of people (who do this) and tell them what could happen I would, but you know what, they would laugh at me,” he said. “They’d look at me and say ‘what do you know?’ ”

Mr. Reyes was annoyed and upset when the rock hit his truck.“I think they were just bored and didn’t really have much to do and they thought that would be something fun to do,” said Mr. Reyes, a father of three children. “I can’t imagine why. Someone possibly could have been killed.”

Doors, windows and roofs of about a dozen cars were damaged. A pile of 60 or so rocks along with sticks and bottles were found near the ramp. One car had a rock smash the windshield and glass sprayed onto the passenger seat.

A child was in the back seat of that car, but was unharmed along with all the other drivers and passengers, Trooper Andrew Daige said.

“We were very fortunate that the Worcester Police Department responded so quickly and obviously if he (Mr. Reyes) hadn’t gone up into the woods and located them I don’t know what luck we would have had identifying the juveniles,” the trooper said.

Trooper Davidson Lamarre interviewed the juveniles and they admitted to having thrown the rocks at traffic, state police said.

State police see these types of calls more often in the summer. It is usually at the Harrison Street overpass, Trooper Daige said.

“I don’t think people grasp how dangerous this situation really is,” he said.